Anisotropic finite-difference algorithm for modeling elastic wave propagation in fractured coalbeds

The simulation of wave propagations in coalbeds is challenged by two major issues: (1) strong anisotropy resulting from high-density cracks/fractures in coalbeds and (2) numerical dispersion resulting from high-frequency content (the dominant frequency can be higher than 100 Hz). We present a staggered-grid high-order finite-difference (FD) method with arbitrary even-order ([Formula: see text]) accuracy to overcome the two difficulties stated above. First, we derive the formulae based on the standard Taylor series expansion but given in a neat and explicit form. We also provide an alternative way to calculate the FD coefficients. The detailed implementations are shown and the stability condition for anisotropic FD modeling is examined by the eigenvalue analysis method. Then, we apply the staggered-grid FD method to 2D and 3D coalbed models with dry and water-saturated fractures to study the characteristics of the 2D/3C elastic wave propagation in anisotropic media. Several factors, like density and direction of vertical cracks, are investigated. Several phenomena, like S-wave splitting and waveguides, are observed and are consistent with those observed in a real data set. Numerical results show that our formulae can correlate the amplitude and traveltime anisotropies with the coal seam fractures.

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Temporal high-order staggered-grid finite-difference schemes for elastic wave propagation

Geophysics ◽

10.1190/geo2017-0005.1 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 82 (5) ◽

pp. T207-T224 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Zhiming Ren ◽

Zhen Chun Li

Keyword(s):

Wave Propagation ◽

Wave Equation ◽

Finite Difference ◽

Elastic Wave ◽

High Order ◽

Elastic Wave Propagation ◽

Staggered Grid ◽

S Wave ◽

Order Accuracy ◽

Spatial Derivatives

The traditional high-order finite-difference (FD) methods approximate the spatial derivatives to arbitrary even-order accuracy, whereas the time discretization is still of second-order accuracy. Temporal high-order FD methods can improve the accuracy in time greatly. However, the present methods are designed mainly based on the acoustic wave equation instead of elastic approximation. We have developed two temporal high-order staggered-grid FD (SFD) schemes for modeling elastic wave propagation. A new stencil containing the points on the axis and a few off-axial points is introduced to approximate the spatial derivatives. We derive the dispersion relations of the elastic wave equation based on the new stencil, and we estimate FD coefficients by the Taylor series expansion (TE). The TE-based scheme can achieve ([Formula: see text])th-order spatial and ([Formula: see text])th-order temporal accuracy ([Formula: see text]). We further optimize the coefficients of FD operators using a combination of TE and least squares (LS). The FD coefficients at the off-axial and axial points are computed by TE and LS, respectively. To obtain accurate P-, S-, and converted waves, we extend the wavefield decomposition into the temporal high-order SFD schemes. In our modeling, P- and S-wave separation is implemented and P- and S-wavefields are propagated by P- and S-wave dispersion-relation-based FD operators, respectively. We compare our schemes with the conventional SFD method. Numerical examples demonstrate that our TE-based and TE + LS-based schemes have greater accuracy in time and better stability than the conventional method. Moreover, the TE + LS-based scheme is superior to the TE-based scheme in suppressing the spatial dispersion. Owing to the high accuracy in the time and space domains, our new SFD schemes allow for larger time steps and shorter operator lengths, which can improve the computational efficiency.

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